Anti-LGBT
groups have – for obvious reasons – long promoted the ridiculous
claim that they’re being ‘bullied’ by proponents of LGBT equality.
Re-appropriating the ‘bullying’ label helps muddy the debate while distracting
focus from the millions of LGBT people who
are actually routinely victimized as a result of these groups’
anti-equality campaigns.

The
National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is noexception.
In an August 29 blog
entry, NOM promoted the argument that proponents of LGBT equality are the "real gay bigots and bullies.”

NOM’s
post included an excerpt from a column written by conservative commentator
Frank Turek in which he criticized “homosexual activists” for “smear[ing]”
conservatives who simply support the traditional definition of marriage.

There’s
just one small problem with NOM’s post: Turek’s column goes on to engage in the
exact samekind of name-calling and bullying that Turek and NOM claim
to abhor.

Here
are some highlights from Turek’s column (which NOM conveniently failed to include in its
blog post).

Homosexuality
“leads to disease and an early death”:

Celebrating behavior that leads to disease and an early
death is closer to hate than love. According to the latest data from
the Center for Disease Control, homosexual men comprise more than 80 percent of
sexually transmitted HIV cases despite comprising less than 2 percent of the
population. The FDA says that men who have sex with men have an HIV
infection rate 60 times higher than the general population. Why should we
be encouraging behavior that results in such tragic outcomes? If I have good
reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run
over you—the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street. If I
tell you to keep walking down that road—that I celebrate the road you’re on—how
could I hate you more? [emphasis added]

Being
gay isn’t genetic, it’s a destructive behavioral choice:

But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do
with behavior, but homosexuality is a behavior! Skin color
affects no one, but destructive behavior affects many. Moreover, sexual
behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former
homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African-American.

[…]

[A] genetic component to homosexual desires has not been
discovered. Twin studies show that identical twins do not consistently have the
same sexual orientation. In fact, genetics probably explains very little about
homosexual desires. How would a homosexual “gene” be passed on? Homosexuals
don’t pass on anything because homosexual unions don’t reproduce.

Accepting
homosexuality is the same as accepting rape, incest, and pedophilia:

[W]hile desires are not a choice, sexual behavior always
is. So regardless of the source of sexual desires, people are certainly capable
of controlling their sexual behavior. If you claim that they are not—that
sexual behavior is somehow uncontrollable—then you have made the absurd
contention that no one can be morally responsible for any sexual crime,
including rape, incest, and pedophilia. [emphasis added]

Ignoring
your anatomy (assumedly through gay sex) “is often fatal”:

[T]he “born-that-way” claim is an argument from design—
“since God designed me with these desires, I ought to act on them.” But the
people who say this overlook something far more obvious and important— they
were also born with a specific anatomy. We can’t know if our desires are inborn
since we can’t remember anything from birth, but we are 100 percent certain
that we were born with our anatomy. So why do homosexual activists choose to
follow their desires rather than their anatomy? Ignoring your desires may be
uncomfortable, but ignoring the natural design of your body is often fatal. [emphasis
added]

This
isn’t the first time NOM has advanced these
kinds of claims either. Earlier this month, NOM promoted the idea that
homosexuality could “end your life prematurely” and called the “LGBT
lifestyle” diseased, drug-ridden, and deviant. NOM’s president, Brian
Brown, recently made the argument that same-sex marriage would result in the normalization
of pedophilia. Last month, NOM openly promoted “ex-gay” therapy talking
points, pushing the idea that gay people could “leave
homosexuality” if they chose to do so.

So
to recap:

“Homosexual
activists” want equal protection under the law and actively call out those who
oppose LGBT equality on the basis of bigotry and animus.

Groups
like NOM tell LGBT people that their lives are diseased and destructive choices
than are akin to pedophilia and incest.